Legal Jobs in the Home Counties

The Home Counties are among the largest legal markets in England outside London, and the one most often described as if it were one place. It is not. This page covers the counties to the north and west of the capital — Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire — where a solicitor can build a career at a top-100 firm without a commute into the City. Kent, Surrey and Sussex, which some people also call the Home Counties, have their own page: legal jobs in Kent, Surrey & Sussex.

The market here is shaped by the M1, M40 and M4 corridors. National firms have moved serious commercial work out of London into Milton Keynes, Reading and St Albans; regional independents in Hertford, Aylesbury, Bedford and Northampton have grown into genuine multi-office practices; and the science and technology economy around the two university cities has created an in-house counsel market that did not exist fifteen years ago. Many candidates split their search between here and London; we handle both, and can tell you frankly which will pay more for your practice area and which will give you a life.

We place at every level from paralegal and newly qualified through to Partner and General Counsel, in private practice and in-house, across the six counties.

Hertfordshire

The county closest to London has the deepest bench of mid-sized firms: Debenhams Ottaway and SA Law in St Albans, Longmores in Hertford, Taylor Walton across St Albans, Harpenden and Luton, and Crane & Staples in Welwyn Garden City. Private client, residential and commercial property, and family are the volume practice areas, and salaries track London more closely here than anywhere else on this page.

Buckinghamshire

Milton Keynes is the commercial engine: Shoosmiths, Freeths and Howes Percival all run substantial offices there, alongside Woodfines, and the corporate, commercial and construction teams recruit steadily from NQ upwards. To the south, Blaser Mills in High Wycombe and B P Collins in Gerrards Cross anchor a strong private client and property market serving some of the wealthiest postcodes in the country.

Berkshire

Reading is the Thames Valley's legal capital. Blake Morgan, Boyes Turner, Field Seymour Parkes and Clarkslegal compete for corporate, employment and commercial property work generated by the technology companies along the M4, and the in-house market — Microsoft, Oracle and a long tail of software businesses around Reading, Bracknell and Slough — is the strongest outside London for commercial and technology lawyers.

Oxfordshire

Oxfordshire's legal market is a science market as much as a university one. Penningtons Manches Cooper, Freeths, Blake Morgan and Hedges Law serve the spin-out and life-sciences economy at Harwell, Milton Park and the Oxford Science Park, and intellectual property, corporate and commercial contracts lawyers are in consistent demand. Banbury and Witney sustain good general practice firms.

Bedfordshire

Bedford and Luton are undersold. Woodfines and Machins offer real career paths at a lower cost of living than anywhere further south, and the logistics and distribution businesses along the M1 keep commercial property and employment teams busy year-round.

Northamptonshire

Northampton's Wilson Browne, Tollers and Howes Percival are long-established multi-office practices that hire across every mainstream practice area, and the county's warehousing and motorsport economy generates a steady flow of commercial, construction and employment work.